Picking up your land line phone and calling anywhere in the world is cheap, right? After all, the competition are freebies like  Gmail video chat and Skype.

Wrong on the first point! I blithely picked up the phone recently and dialed an Australian cell phone to do an interview. The charge just came in for the 22-minute call – $123.30 including tax.

The good news is Verizon forgave me for it because an understanding customer support person believed me when I told her the long distance operator informed me there’d by no charge. The operator had taken pity on me because I could not dial it direct, but did not follow through on erasing the charge.

The irony is the guy I interviewed – banking technology expert Brett King – was in New York at the time of the call – a mere 230 miles away from me in Boston.

I was surprised to hear from a Verizon call checker a couple of weeks ago to check if I actually made the call because  I have never phoned anyone Down Under before. At the time, the charge was $87 so somehow it grew to the billed amount of $123.30. The Verizon customer support person gave me an explanation, but I’ve already forgotten it.

The Verizon customer support person was in Andover, Mass. ,  a mere 15 miles from me. She was terrific. Had that person been halfway around the world, I highly doubt the charge would have been dropped.

It seems the further away,  the less empowered and sympathetic they are. Certainly, far flung customer support people are hard to understand over what are often poor connections.

As it turns out, I do not have a international calling plan which would allow me to direct dial internationally…that’s $4.95 a month. In fact, the Verizon customer support person told me I am now blocked from making the $3- a-minute international calls through the long distance unless I get this plan.

Who’d want to? With the $4.95 direct dial plan, the charge drop to about 15-18 cents a minute. But it’ll be Skype or Gmail video chat for me when my daughter goes to school in Australia this Fall.

Anyhow, Verizon’s understanding on  the charge is commendable. Thank you, VZ.

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